Digital marketing is opening a lot of possibilities for dealerships to personalize their customers’ shopping experience and increase sales, but the terms can be daunting to navigate. Here is a look at the various aspects of digital transformation and how they can help you personalize the buying experience for your customers:

Artificial intelligence (AI) versus machine learning: While these terms are often used interchangeably, AI refers to any kind of computer or machine that does a task. It can be lifting or walking, or any other kind of job. By contrast, machine learning is when a robot or computer use prior experiences to “learn” what to do in different situations. In an ideal setting, machine learning allows for a robot to “think” like humans and make decisions like a person would.

Predictive analytics: This is one of the major applications of AI and machine learning, allowing companies to analyze the past behaviors of customers to predict what they might purchase or browse next. This is the technology that results in ads popping up for the work boots you browsed a week ago.

As a dealership, the use of these technologies is valuable for personalization and smart targeting in your digital marketing. Digital marketing is a much more precise science than traditional marketing forms like direct mail or radio advertising (though both can play an important role in your marketing).

Personalizationtools allow you to zero in on what your potential customer is shopping for, and then use targeted marketing to keep reaching out to them about the product they are interested in purchasing.

Consider walking into a sporting goods store, where you’re browsing fishing equipment. You look down to answer a text message on your smartphone, and when you look up, all the aisles in the sporting goods store have become fishing equipment aisles.

The next time you go into that store, you’re amazed that the fishing section is right up front, followed by the hunting section, because the store owner remembered that you also like to hunt and you might want to look at that camouflage jacket again that you considered buying a few weeks ago.

You have a lot of opportunity for online shoppers to show them this kind of personalization with a car selection based on their prior shopping habits. If a customer has been browsing minivans, you have the ability to hone in on what kind of package they may want on their minivan and the colors they prefer.

Smart targeting and pop-ups give you the opportunity to bring a customer back that’s been browsing your site. In the minivan example, the next time you’re featuring a special rebate on minivans or you get one on your lot that has a close combination of features to the ones they’ve been shopping, there’s technology that can alert your customer to an opportunity to buy.

Digital marketing provides opportunities for crafting a highly personalized message for each individual customer. Make sure you’re partnering with a website vendor that’s savvy about personalization in digital marketing so that you can capture the sales you need to grow.